I arrived in Houston last night, no problems at all. The family that is hosting the first part of my stay (I'll move to a hotel once the family, BF, etc. start arriving) picked me up at the airport and welcomed me. They have what amounts to a hotel room in their garage set up for guests. A double bed, private bath, TV, computer, refrigerator, microwave, coffee pot... no Holiday Inn would have it beat! They are also gracious enough to allow me to borrow one of their cars for the week, which is awesome. Houston doesn't really have a public transport system to speak off, though I'm told that there is a light rail line that runs into downtown. One line. That's the whole thing. For a town this size that seems so odd to me.

this morning I went over to the Gallery for my first taste of the space. The gallery is owned by a church which has always had me worried a little. All I knew was that it was part of a complex, a bookstore, and coffee shop shared part of the space. In my mind I had pictures of a huge sprawling mega-church complex, the likes of which I know exist in Texas. In reality the church complex is a small area in the Montrose District which is one of the artsier areas of town (and apparently home of the annual Gay Pride parade!). Besides the gallery and the bookstore they also run a small farmers market full of organic vegetables. The gallery space is off the coffee shop and is essentially a large white room with a small stage at one end, and around the corner is the little market. (I think/hope that the market gets put away at night, but it isn't terribly intrusive.) The church (from looking at their website seems like a pretty liberal place.

Today I am spending most of the day at a copy center doing some scans and blow-ups of the images to help fill the space a bit. One of the smaller walls will be dominated by 5 2'x3' blow-ups of the some selected sketches. (I hope they hold up at that scale!) By doing the scanning and pre-press work myself I can cut the costs, and get the files turned around a lot faster so that we can get them hung and installed tomorrow.

I'll be posting some photos of the space, and of the process later today, but I thought you'd all enjoy some updates for now.

6 Response to "At The Gallery: Day 1"

Cully,Have a great time! Those of us who know and love your work will be waiting (not so patiently) to see photos of the gallery with your work hanging in it - especially the poster size pieces. You need to tell us what Houstonians, who never ride public transportation, have to say about our subway riding in NYC.

Welcome to Houston!! Yup, everyone has a car because there's no other way to get around. Notice there aren't many pedestrians, either. It would be a real challenge to get a drawing done on the MetroRail because it's so short. But the advantage is you can go from the museum of fine arts to downtown without putting up with traffic. By now you may have noticed all the traffic on the freeways. Stay away from 610 and Westheimer in the evening (Galleria area)! I'm sure you're getting lots of good Texas style advice! But since you're not far from it, you may want to check out the Texas Junk Company at 215 Welch! Really cool junk.http://houston.citysearch.com/profile/9842576/houston_tx/texas_junk_company.html~Sharon